Ne Castle

En un regard

Le château en bref

The site of Ne stands on a terrace on the right bank of the lower Mabechi River in Hachinohe, at an elevation of about 20 metres. From this position both the overland routes and the river approach to the Pacific could be watched. The castle consists of five platforms divided by moats: Honmaru, Nakadate, Tōzenji-date, Okamae-date and Sawasato-date. Each retained a degree of autonomy, a common arrangement in medieval fortification, where defensive units were set side by side rather than nested around a single core. Tradition links the foundation to Nanbu Moroyuki in 1334, during Kitabatake Akiie's governorship of Mutsu; the date remains disputed, however, and a standard historical dictionary states that it is not known with certainty. The branch of the Nanbu settled here lived on the site for about three centuries, until its transfer to Tōno in 1627, when the castle was completely dismantled. Designated a National Historic Site in 1941, the site was excavated from 1978 and its landscaping was largely completed in 1994. On the Honmaru, a group of timber buildings has been reconstructed on the basis of the archaeological results: main hall (shuden), workshop, plank storehouse, barn and stable. The reconstruction shows the castle as it stood in the Azuchi-Momoyama period, at the end of the sixteenth century, not as it was at its foundation. It presents a lord's residence without a keep, quite unlike the towered castles of the Edo period.